About the project
Join the UK-wide Offshore Renewable Energy Supergen Hub project, and contribute to the geotechnical engineering of floating offshore wind. We’re using innovation to streamline seabed characterisation, farm-scale design and anchoring technologies.
You’ll be based in the National Infrastructure Laboratory using leading facilities for physical and numerical modelling in offshore geotechnics.
What will you do?
Your PhD will be framed around one or more of these topics:
- Optimising farm-scale site characterisation: Evaluate the best approach for farm-scale geotechnical design, which suits the city-scale extent of modern wind farms and makes best use of existing and new site investigation tools.
- Farm-scale geotechnical design strategies: Devise new design approaches that adopt reliability-based methods to suit farms with hundreds of turbines, considering the variability in loading actions and geotechnical capacity.
- Anchoring systems for floating offshore wind: Develop novel anchor concepts, suited to the seabed conditions in ORE frontier regions, and develop a rigorous basis for their design.
You will work our relevant industry partners, keeping your project aligned with ORE sector needs, and giving you exposure to the challenges of real projects.
What is the expected impact of this research?
- Cost reduction: Optimised ORE design and installation processes, that allow cost-effective deployment of future wind farms.
- Environmental sustainability: Enable wider adoption of offshore wind energy, mitigating the climate crisis.
- Technological advancement: Push the boundaries of offshore geotechnical engineering knowledge.
What are the benefits for you?
- Work with a team of academic and industry experts in the geotechnical design of offshore wind systems and use state-of-the-art facilities.
- Develop advanced numerical and physical modelling skills, and a deep knowledge of offshore geotechnics, accelerating your career in academia or industry.
- Develop transferrable skills, write papers, attend conferences and extend your network via the Supergen ORE Hub activities.
You will become part of the Offshore Renewable Energy Supergen Hub, with access to this national network for training and career development.
